


The Good Things

by Threshie



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Androids Contemplating The Afterlife, Carl Manfred Dies, Cemetery, Comforting Markus, Connor & Markus (Detroit: Become Human) Friendship, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Gen, Grieving Connor, Hank Anderson Adopts Connor, Hank Anderson Dies, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Sumo (Detroit: Become Human) Dies, Time Skips, guilty Connor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 09:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Threshie/pseuds/Threshie
Summary: It has been two years since the androids peacefully won their freedom. When Connor loses first Sumo and then Hank, he thinks he's truly alone in the world. An unexpected visitor arrives just when he needs a friend the most.





	The Good Things

It’s been a year since Connor last spoke to Markus. 

After the androids were freed, Markus tried to stay in touch, inviting Connor to visit the android sanctuary occasionally, but Connor always politely declined, feeling like the others wouldn’t want to see him. Connor had been the enemy, after all. 

After awhile, Markus stopped contacting him. Connor assumes it’s because he’s avoided things so long that Markus thinks Connor no longer wants to be friends. That isn’t true. Connor just thinks Markus has better things to do than to visit him. He did back then, and he probably does now. There’s still so much to do for androids to be respected and treated fairly as people, and Markus has become their leader and spokesperson.

It’s been a good year, living with Hank and Sumo in Hank’s house and being friends. Being family. Connor is so young still that he doesn’t know what Hank knows — that dogs don’t live that long, especially Saint Bernards. Connor notices that Sumo’s slowing down, getting gray around the muzzle, but he thinks it’s just gradual change, the way Hank’s hair keeps getting longer. Part of life.

Sumo passes peacefully in his sleep, and that’s when Connor realizes it’s been death he’s been watching approach.

“What do we do now?” Connor asks, when Sumo’s body has been buried and everyone has gotten done telling Hank how sorry they are for his loss. Hank’s been quiet and distant for days, and Connor knows he’s thinking about how he also lost his son. The android has tried to be quiet and patient, but since becoming a deviant, it’s hard to be perfectly rational. 

Connor misses Sumo, too. He misses walking with him, and feeding him, and petting him. He misses the dog licking his face, and Sumo’s snores when he used to nap peacefully on the kitchen floor. Connor’s never had to deal with death before, not with the loss part, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

So he asks Hank.

And Hank, who he expects to say something cynical like “What do you want me to do? He’s gone,” instead sees the sincere lost look in Connor’s eyes and waves him over to sit at the kitchen table together. 

“Now we remember the good things,” Hank says, pouring a glass of whiskey for them both. 

Connor doesn’t need to eat or drink, but he can if he wants, and it seems to be a gesture for Sumo. So he accepts the glass, and he raises it when Hank raises his, and they toast to their late furry friend. 

“Now we’re gonna miss him,” Hank says, “And it’s gonna hurt like hell, but we’ve gotta try and be glad we got to have him here with us for as long as we did. To Sumo.” 

“To Sumo,” Connor agrees, and they drink together.

He’s so grateful for Hank. The man is no stranger to loss, and he could have easily withdrawn and snapped and gotten bitter the way he was when Connor met him. 

Instead, Hank explains what they’re feeling, that there are stages to grief. He shows Connor how to honor the good memories, and how to focus on the good things. They look at pictures of Sumo together, from when he was a puppy, even one of him with Hank’s son Cole. Connor files them all carefully away, precious memories to hold onto for years. He vows he’ll never forget Sumo, or stop loving him.  


* * *

  
It’s been two years since Connor last spoke to Markus, and weeks since he’s spoken to anyone.

Hank is gone. 

It’s still sinking in, somehow, even though Connor is the one who found his body. A heart attack, his scans had concluded. The result of years of Hank slowly wrecking his health with his diet, with alcohol. It was so sudden, though. One morning Connor went to the store, and that afternoon he came home, and Hank was already gone.

And for the first time, Connor was truly alone.

The police held a funeral for Hank with all of the honors. They took care of laying him to rest, and Connor attended the service, and he listened to all of the speeches and comments from people who knew Hank. Connor couldn’t bring himself to stand up and speak, though, because it didn’t feel real yet. 

Maybe the lack of tears came across to the others as cold. It had been shock, though, really.

After the funeral came the legal proceedings — the money, the papers, the will. Hank wasn’t the type for sappy conversations or warm and fuzzy feelings exchanged. Connor lived with him for years, but they never really discussed what they were to each other. So it came as a surprise to Connor more than anyone when he learned that Hank had willed his home and belongings to Connor. In the will he called Connor his son.

Connor had been his son. 

Now, alone in what will always be Hank’s house to him, the android feels more lost than ever. He has their home still, but it’s hardly a home without Hank in it. Connor doesn’t need the kitchen — and going in there reminds him of cooking with Hank. He doesn’t need the bathroom, and when he peers inside he sees all of Hank’s sticky notes around the mirror.

There’s one that says “Shave?” that has been there since Connor met him. Connor remembers the day Hank finally did shave his beard off, and put a strike-through line across the sticky note’s word. Then he immediately decided that he was growing his beard out again.

The couch reminds Connor of them watching basketball together, Hank stubbornly insisting that luck played a factor in a game Connor only saw as physics and timing and the statistics of the players involved.

Connor tries to remember the good things. He pours himself a glass of Hank’s whiskey, and he sits at the kitchen table, and he toasts to nobody since he’s all alone. 

“To Hank,” he whispers, and drinks it down. But thinking about the good things only hurts. The more he tries to remember how lucky he was to have Hank as long as he did, the more bleak and empty the future looks without him. 

Connor will live a very long time. All androids do. He’s got no-one left in the world, and imagining all of those years being lonely makes him want to cry. 

He hasn’t done that since he lost Hank. It really is like he’s in shock — the tears won’t come, and the peace he found when he and Hank grieved for Sumo together isn’t coming either. Nobody’s going to visit and talk to him — the police hardly looked at him at the funeral. Other androids are afraid of him, the great deviant hunter who is now in the history books.

Hank lost his son, Connor thinks, and now his other son has lost Hank. He wishes he’d been able to have that talk with Hank, about fathers and sons, and to tell Hank what he meant to Connor. 

But Hank is gone.

Tears are finally welling up and spilling over, and it’s not the relief he expected it to be. It feels…awful. Pointless. It’s just the hurt spilling over, now that there’s so much he can’t contain it anymore. And nobody’s going to notice, or to care.

He’s alone.

Connor sits there for days. He sits and he holds his empty whiskey glass from the pointless toast to the empty air, and eventually the tears dry on his face. No-one cares. No-one is coming, not even to take the house away. No-one ever visited for Connor, everyone visited for Hank.

The doorbell sounds, like an echo from the past. Connor ignores it. It must be one of Hank’s friends, and don’t they know he’s gone? The news must have reported it by now. They should pay better attention.

The bell rings again, and this time it’s followed by a tentative knocking. Connor wants to shout at them to go away, but he doesn’t have the heart to even raise his voice. So he just sits there and waits for them to give up and leave him alone. 

The front door opens, and he doesn’t even look up. He must have left it unlocked. No matter — they’ll leave when they realize Hank isn’t here anymore.

“Connor,” comes a soft voice from the kitchen doorway. For the first time in days, Connor looks up. 

Blue and green eyes gaze back at him, full of sad sympathy. Like he did when he’d first lost Hank, Connor can’t really believe what’s happening. He slowly gets to his feet, staring. 

It’s Markus. Markus is here in Hank’s house…in Connor’s house.

The deviant leader places a hand on Connor’s shoulder. When he speaks, it’s only a few words, but they’re soft and sincere.

“Connor, I saw on the news. I’m so sorry.” 

That’s the first time anyone has told Connor that since Hank’s…Hank’s sudden absence. Markus, who he hasn’t tried to contact in two years, saw Hank was gone and within days he left whatever important thing he must have been doing to come here, just to say those few words that nobody else had bothered to say. 

Connor can feel the way his calm expression crumples into raw pain, and the next thing he knows he’s clinging to his old friend, sobbing so hard it shakes them both. 

He’s not alone. He’s not alone. He’s not alone.

“It’s alright. It’ll be alright…” Markus’ voice is soft and gentle, reassuring in its steady calm. Connor can’t understand how it can be alright ever again, but someone knows about Hank, and they’re still promising it can be.

Can it be?

Once Markus leaves, Connor will be alone again. As the other android leads him slowly to the couch and they both sit down, it’s that thought that keeps the tears flowing. Connor doesn’t want to be alone anymore. What’s the point of living so long if he’s just staying here all by himself? 

He misses Hank.

“I know how awful this feels,” Markus murmurs to him, keeping an arm around him. He lets Connor rest his head on his shoulder, and even rests his other hand over the RK800’s dark hair. “I’m here. I’m here.” 

“Hank,” Connor manages, scared of how little control he has over the shuddering simulated breaths he’s speaking through. Did they program this kind of despair into him, or is it because he’s a deviant? Did someone somewhere in CyberLife spent hours perfecting this kind of suffering for the sake of realism? 

“Hank was one of the best men I’ve ever met. Like Carl.” Markus’ voice is still so calm that it feels surreal. He sounds sad, but there are no tears, no hysterics. Connor feels strangely useless and helpless sitting beside him. 

“I lost Carl a year ago,” Markus explains. Connor finally sits up enough to meet his eyes, and the other android looks back with unguarded fondness, sadness…how can he feel so many things at once? “He was my father,” Markus says softly, cradling Connor’s face in his hands. 

He wipes the tears away with his thumbs, one side at a time. Connor’s still crying, but the gesture touches him. The words do, too. So Markus does know how he feels.

Except that there are still people who love Markus. When he lost Carl, he wasn’t so utterly alone.

“Hank,” he manages again, his voice still watery and small, “H-Hank was my father, too. We never got to talk…talk about it, though, in his will he just…” He’s welling up in tears again, shaking his head as the living room carpet blurs into smudged blobs of color. “H-he called me his son. I-I was his son.”

“Connor, you ARE his son.” Markus looks him in the eye again, still cradling his face. “Just like I’m still Carl’s son. And they’re still our fathers, even though they’re gone. They’ll always be.”

“I’ve got nobody left,” Connor tells him raggedly. “Once you leave, I-I’ll be alone.”

“Then I won’t leave.”

Connor wishes he could keep that promise. Markus is too important to too many people, though. There’s no way he could just…stay. Is there?

“Y-you’ve got more important things to worry about,” Connor whispers, his voice hitching in the middle.

“You’re important,” Markus tells him with conviction. His eyes are starting to tear, too, and Connor feels even worse to be the cause of it. “And our people can live without me for awhile while I help you. You shouldn’t be alone right now, and I couldn’t go back home knowing you were. Please, Connor, let me stay.”

Connor leans in and wraps his arms around Markus, resting his head on the deviant leader’s shoulder again. 

“…Y-you can stay. Please stay. Thank you.”

Markus hugs him and rubs his back, swaying them gently back and forth. 

After awhile, Connor calms down and composes himself. Markus is staying, he’s going to stay. Knowing Connor won’t be alone in the house tonight is a relief, but the absence of Hank is still overwhelming. Hank taught him so much about what it means to be alive that Connor has no idea how to live without him. He liked the life he had with Hank — he isn’t sure he’ll like any other.

“Can I ask you something, Connor?” Markus ventures after awhile. The RK800 is sitting beside him, bewildered by the mix of sadness and shame he’s swimming in as he wipes at his eyes and sniffles. He still feels bad to be taking up Markus’ time.

“Yes, of course you can,” Connor sighs.

Markus turns toward him more, resting a hand on his shoulder again. 

“It’s been two years since the revolution. Why don’t you have anyone at all you’ve made friends with besides Hank and Sumo?”

Connor can feel his shoulders slumping in defeat. His lack of friends is his own fault, really. Hank and Sumo were familiar, so they were safe. They’d known him like no-one else did.

“Humans hardly look at me, and androids…they shouldn’t have to deal with me,” he whispers.

“Connor, you’re one of us.” Markus sounds deeply troubled to hear him saying such things. “Nothing you did before you deviated is your fault, you have to know that.”

Connor can’t look him in the eye. He can feel his brows furrowing low.

“Maybe not, but I’m the one they remember hunting them down,” he tries to explain. “I’m the face they see when they remember an android that betrays other androids. The traitor. The deviant hunter. I didn’t try to make friends because I’ve hurt enough people like us already. Nobody wants me to join them and to be happy, nobody would’ve even missed me except for Hank if I didn’t make it through the fight…”

“I would’ve missed you. I have missed you.” Markus says it quietly, but it hits Connor like he’s shouting it.

“You have?”

“Connor,” Markus begins, then sighs and starts again. “Connor, I figured you had your reasons for the radio silence. I never stopped thinking of you, though, and the kind of person you are.”

Connor sits up slightly straighter. He’s not sure if he’s curious or scared to find out.

“And what kind of person is that?” 

“The kind who’s brave enough to walk into the CyberLife Tower on a suicide mission,” Markus says, leaning to catch his gaze. Connor meets his eyes and sees that his expression is an earnest one. Genuine. “The kind of person who helped me free our people when we’d hardly even met. And definitely the kind who’s too hard on himself for the past.” 

“People died because of my investigation,” Connor says softly, looking down at the living room carpet. 

“Did you blame Hank?”

He sits up again, eyes wide, and quickly shakes his head.

“What? Of course not!”

“Then you shouldn’t blame yourself, either. You two were partners working on the exact same investigation,” Markus reasons. Connor can’t fault his logic there, but it’s different. Hank wanted no part of the investigation from the start, and by the end he was wholeheartedly on the side of the deviants. 

As for Connor… Connor had been intent on being good, and successful, and pleasing Amanda. His programming had very rarely had to keep him in line — he’d WANTED to stay in line. It makes him sick to think of what he had been willing to do, what he would have done without a second thought, back before he deviated. Is murder still murder if you’re a machine at the time?

Markus places a hand on Connor’s shoulder, drawing him gently back to the present.

“If you trust me, Connor, then please believe what I’m saying. Our people don’t hate you. The history books love the drama of the ‘great deviant hunter’, but I make sure that all androids know how essential you were to securing our freedom. You and Hank both, you’ll always be heroes to us.”

Connor blinks back fresh tears. They’ve been talking about Hank, he realizes. Remembering the good things, in a way. That makes it all hurt just a little bit less. 

Also apparently Connor has been isolating himself for years from a society that would’ve welcomed him.

“I do trust you,” he whispers. “I just don’t know what to do now, Markus.”

Markus studies his expression for a long moment, looking thoughtful. He gets to his feet, then, and offers Connor his hand.

“Why don’t we visit Hank?”

Connor takes his hand without hesitation, even as he also says, “How? He’s gone.”

“I visited his gravestone before coming here,” Markus admits, helping Connor to his feet. Connor trails after him sadly as he goes to the front door and returns with a winter coat for him. “I thought you might be there. It’s the same memorial park where Carl is, and I visit him all the time.”

Connor pulls on his coat, trying not to tear up again as he imagines Markus going through this misery all over again. Why do humans have to die? 

Markus seems to be back to his usual calm self, though, after losing his father. Maybe if he can do it, someday Connor can, too. He feels so awful, it seems impossible to go back to how he was before, but he keeps playing Hank’s explanation of the stages of grief over and over, trying to reassure himself that eventually he’ll get to “acceptance” again. 

Hank… 

He’s just recordings now, like Sumo. Pictures and footage to cling to forever. 

“What do you do when you visit Carl?” He asks Markus as they step outside into the snow. 

It’s automatic to lock the door as he goes, the way he’s been doing for years. He remembers the day Hank got the second key made for him and said he could come and go as he pleased. It had really felt like he lived there after that, that they were equals.

“I talk to him,” Markus says, “Or bring him things. Sometimes I just clean up around his gravestone, keep it nice. Carl was an artist, he’d appreciate that.”

Connor blinks at him, and says without thinking, “Hank loves Jazz and donuts.” It should be past tense — Hank is gone — but it still feels wrong to say it like that.

Markus smiles back at him, resting a hand on his shoulder as they walk.

“Well then maybe you could bring him some.”  


* * *

  
Connor remembers his way around the memorial park from the day of the funeral. It’s different now, still and peaceful. Snowflakes are starting to drift down from the sky, and the frosted petals of the flowers on Hank’s grave remind him of winter in Amanda’s Zen garden. It’s beautiful and cold. 

There are so many flowers for Hank. He had had no family left except for Connor, but his fellow police had known him for decades. Fowler, the police chief, said during the funeral that he and Hank went to high school together. It’s strangely comforting now, realizing that he’s not the only one left in the world who is missing Hank, even if it feels like it.

Markus looks at the gravestone and smiles, gesturing for Connor to step forward. He does so, uncertainly, and places the little box of donuts down beside all of the graceful flowers. It feels out of place, but it’s undeniably something Hank would love. Connor’s unsure what his opinion of roses and lilies was. 

“You can say something to him if you want,” Markus encourages, clasping his hands in front of him. Connor looks down at the gravestone sadly.

“Why? I know he won’t be able to hear it anyway.”

“Do you?” 

Markus’ question catches him off-guard. Connor frowns at him, not angrily but uncertainly. 

“Nobody really knows what happens after death,” Markus continues thoughtfully, looking at Hank’s gravestone. “Not humans, not us. Who’s to say Carl and Hank aren’t watching us right now, or hearing what we say to them?”

Connor wants to say that it’s because they no longer have ears, or brains, or bodies. Markus isn’t talking about their bodies, though.

“You mean their souls?” He asks. The other android shrugs, nodding toward Hank’s gravestone.

“You can’t deny that there’s something more to them than their bodies. There’s more to us than the bodies they made for us, too. It’s what makes us alive, Connor.”

Connor turns to look at Hank’s grave, too. Markus is right. Hank was more than just his body. It’s impossible to prove with hard data, but he’s no longer a machine with only that to view the world. Like the day he deviated, he suddenly just knows it to be true: living things have souls in common, somehow, no matter how they were created.

Hank isn’t as gone as it feels. He’s not just pictures and footage to cling to. And someday, if all souls go to the same place, Connor might even see him and Sumo again.

Kneeling by the gravestone, Connor reaches out and pats the box of donuts. If Hank can see it, he’s got to be smiling.

“If you can hear me, Hank, I-I hope you know how much I miss you,” Connor tells him. “And how happy I am to be your son.” He pauses to calm the welling tears and emotions, and it’s a comfort when Markus rests a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “A-and I’m going to try my best to remember all the good things, like you taught me to. Give Sumo some pets for me, okay?” He waits a moment, as if Hank might respond, and promises, “I’ll visit again soon.”

When he stands, he hugs Markus sideways with one arm, and gets the same in return. They stand there with their arms around each other and look at the gravestone.

“Do you think he heard me?” Connor whispers.

“I think he’s petting Sumo right this minute,” Markus whispers back.

They’re both smiling as they walk away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my fanfic! This is the kind of plot bunny I love/hate -- the kind where I normally don't write things so sad, but the entire plot occurred to me and I wrote the whole outline in one sitting, so I had to write it. I love Hank and Sumo and Carl so much that I had to take breaks from writing a few times, because I was making myself cry. 
> 
> Androids contemplating death and the afterlife is always an interesting theme to explore, but ouch, what a way to get there. Comments and kudos make my day (even if it's just a comment cursing me for cutting onions in here!) ♥


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